This week we had the pleasure of hosting our friend Jon Aikman, President and CIO of ReSolution Investments, for a broad conversation on the three-lettered acronym that has taken the investment world by storm in the last few years: ESG – Environmental, Social and Governance. We covered:

• How a background in law, banking and academia developed into a passion for impact investing
• While the environment has drawn most of the attention, we shouldn’t overlook the social and governance agenda
• Untangling definitions and acronyms
• Anti-carbon policies running ahead of replacement technology
• Oil isn’t going away any time soon – think carbon sequestration
• Environmental goals at odds with shareholder value maximization
• One man’s waste is another man’s biofuel
• Investors’ time horizons are often too short to take long-term externalities into account
• Any time people make investment decisions for non-economic reasons, opportunities arise
• How dislocations impose ripe opportunities for active management
• Green washing, opportunism and gaming the system
• Incorporating inflation hedging within an ESG framework
• The temporal question – developed nations evolved and polluted, emerging markets want the right to do the same
• The tough economic decisions governments, companies and individuals are likely to face in the coming years

Thank you for watching and listening. See you next week.

This is “ReSolve’s Riffs” – live on YouTube every Friday afternoon to debate the most relevant investment topics of the day, hosted by Adam Butler, Mike Philbrick and Rodrigo Gordillo of ReSolve Global* and Richard Laterman of ReSolve Asset Management.

*ReSolve Global refers to ReSolve Asset Management SEZC (Cayman) which is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a commodity trading advisor and commodity pool operator. This registration is administered through the National Futures Association (“NFA”). Further, ReSolve Global is a registered person with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.